Abstract
Female genital mutilation is a serious health problem regarding morbidity and mortality, given that the most dangerous form, infibulation, affects about three quarters of women in the Horn of Africa. However, a significant reduction of female genital mutilations, especially infibulation, has been observed recently in Djibouti. An innovative quantitative clinical survey, which totally renews the measure of such behaviour, highlights an indisputable shift in the practice of FGM. In addition, a socio-anthropological study carried out at the same time on the actors involved, examines the family and social dynamics in play in the sociocultural context of Djibouti (Petit V, Carillon S: Société, familles et individus face à une « question de femmes ». Déconstruire et analyser les décisions relatives à la pratique des MGF à Djibouti. Rapport à l’intention de l’UNFPA et UNICEF. POPINTER, Paris, 2007; Carillon S, Petit V: Autrepart 50:13–30, 2009). The role of the State and international development agencies in this process of social change is observed through the construction and implementation of the policy to combat FGM. This perspective makes it possible to examine the gaps between the expectations of populations and the perception of the actors supposed to instigate social and health improvements.
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Notes
- 1.
The so-called developed countries are also affected by their alignment with increasingly international norms.
- 2.
For example, during the last mandates of the Republican administrations of the United States, the latter chose not to finance family planning programmes including measures to legalise abortion, so as not to upset the conservative religious electorate. In this extension, the choice and order of the words of the slogan “abstinence, being faithful, condom use” in the information campaigns of the combat against HIV/AIDS were also determined by the influence of religious values (being faithful and abstinence). If the primary goal had been efficiency, then the condom would have been presented as the first means of protection against the virus, as the notions of abstinence and being faithful are relative, as shown by certain anthropological and historic works in other contexts.
- 3.
Reproductive health (a concept defined in 1994 at the Cairo Conference) covers the following areas: general well-being, meaning physical, mental and social, for everything concerning the reproductive organs, their functions and functioning. Reproductive health is broken down into five sections: 1/ family planning, contraception; 2/ the combat against HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases (STD); 3/ the combat against female genital mutilations; 4/ the combat against infant and maternal mortality; 5/ the combat against sterility. The control of fertility is encompassed in a wider approach including maternal and infant health.
- 4.
Sources: http://www.dj.undp.org/abtdj.html consulted on 8 April 2010. http://www.unicef.org/french/infobycountry/djibouti_statistics.html consulted on 8 April 2010. In 2008, the UNDP put forward 620,000 inhabitants while UNICEF put the number at 849,000.
- 5.
All mentions of ethnicity had to be deleted in the reports submitted to the institutions that funded this survey. Owing to the civil unrest marking its recent history, the Republic of Djibouti seeks to build a “national identity” and is therefore opposed to bringing ethnic specificities to light.
- 6.
It is noteworthy that this definition runs counter to the traditional idea according to which circumcision may have a prophylactic value.
- 7.
To ensure the anonymity of the people questioned during the ethnological survey, they are identified only by a W (woman) or M (man) and a number in this chapter.
- 8.
According to analyses, mutilations civilise the female body by transforming it, bringing closer to that of men by removing its share of animality. See: Bourdieu, P. (1998). La domination masculine. Paris: Edition du Seuil. Héritier, F. (2002). Masculin/féminin. Paris: Edition Odile Jacob.
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Petit, V. (2018). Female Genital Mutilations and Population Policy in Djibouti. In: Petit, V. (eds) Population Studies and Development from Theory to Fieldwork. Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61774-9_8
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